Fish on Wheels

There is scarcely a day that passes that I don’t awaken with a solitary thought and fall to a restless sleep with that self same question in mind: could a fish pass a driving test? While we haven’t quite reached answer for that pressing query, we’re one step closer with this mini goldfish driven car.

A Netherlands company called “Studio diip” (the same company that gave us the groundbreaking “vegetable recognizer“), has answered the age old question that has plagued scientists and philosophers alike for generations: “If a fish could drive a car, where would it go?”

Using a few simple components: “a standard webcam, a battery-powered Beagleboard and an Arduino-controlled robot vehicle”, these diips have given the family fish free reign over the apartment floor. As the video description explains, “By using a camera and computer vision software it is possible to make a fish control a robot car over land.” That’s a quote I never thought I would copy/paste but that I can now scratch off of THAT list. They continue: “By swimming towards an interesting object, the fish can explore the world beyond the limits of his tank.”

Here you are, you know, so you can make your own all-terrain gold fish…

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First, what exactly IS an “interesting object” to an animal that spends most of its existence in a small, stationary water-filled rectangle? Anything that ISN’T a neon colored castle or a plaster scuba diver? And secondly, how long have these disappointing carnival prizes been yearning for this type of exploratory capability?

I get that the fish-propelled vehicle is more an exercise in showing what can be done; a cute little engineering curiosity and the winner of the office race versus the guy who was designing a machine that would type short stories based on the twitching of a parakeet. But my response to bored programmers at diips is a simple one: Just because something is possible, does not make it necessary. That being said, go on and finish the “Polly Prose” project–that actually sounds hilarious.

Like this:

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